outdoor dining areas

To maximize public awareness and generate visitors, choose a layout that gives your restaurant its own exterior entrance. If this is not feasible, find a space that allows people inside the building hallways to notice the activity inside the restaurant. Some buildings will allow restaurant tables inside the hallway, a sort of indoor “alfresco” dining room.

Parking rental:

The issue of adequate car parking must be considered very early in the planning process, for two reasons.

1. Regardless of whether you are an independent restaurant or in the middle of a strip mall, the ease and availability of car parking is really a critical issue that can make or break a restaurant.

2. The parking area can be both the first and the last impression that the guest has of the place.

We’ll talk in a moment about what makes a parking lot attractive, safe, and convenient. First, let’s discuss the legal requirements to make parking available. In most cases, a city ordinance will clearly detail parking space needs. For free-standing buildings, a widely accepted standard may be the need for 1 parking space for every 100 square feet of roof space.

This includes patio dining covered by permanent awnings, for example, but excludes areas where umbrellas are used. The room “under the roof” contains all the rooms: corridors, closets, kitchens, bathrooms, etc. So if we have a total of 3000 square feet indoors, we need 30 parking spaces. Also, your city will probably tell you how much space to allocate per car. Most ordinances specify that an individual parking space must be 71/2 to 10 feet wide and 16 to 18 feet long. The shorter dimensions are for compact vehicles, and a car park could typically allocate up to 35 percent of its space to compacts.

Approximately, this means that a 40-foot-wide space is needed to park a car at a 90-degree angle to the building and provide a lane of traffic; A little much less space is required if the car is parked at an angle. Simply because parking needs are very technical, check with your city’s zoning authorities to make sure there is enough parking space. If there is not enough parking space on the property, don’t lose hope. Most cities allow off-premises car parking, but only with a signed car parking agreement with the owners of the space adjacent to the restaurant. Valet parking is an additional alternative, if the valet service is located within 600 feet of the restaurant.

If you are within a busy historic district or downtown region, there are often different, much less stringent standards that require fewer spaces (as little as 1 space per 2,000 square feet indoors) and allow car parking on the street. Requesting a variance in local parking laws should be your last resort. The process is expensive, time-consuming, and fraught with competing (and political) interests that could affect your business. If you have a good parking deal, that’s great. Your appearance should be consistent with the image you want to create. To some extent, the parking area also serves as a buffer between your business and the neighbors.

The lot should always be kept free of litter and someone from your staff should be assigned to check it daily. If you can find islands that can be planted attractively with small trees or easy-care shrubs, do some gardening or at least layer the island with bark or stones instead of leaving it as dirt and weeds. Chicago, Illinois, is a city that encourages businesses to landscaping parking areas to help cool the scorching summer heat radiating from the vast expanses of flat concrete and asphalt. A parking area should also convey a sense of security, keeping criminals out as it attracts customers.

From the point of view of legal responsibility, the situation law (on crimes committed in car parks) shows that good security lighting is really a good attempt by a company to provide a risk-free environment. There are three basic goals for parking lot lighting:

1. To provide a specific intensity throughout the batch.

2. Provide high visibility (with minimal glare) for customers and employees three. To achieve the first two goals without disturbing the neighbors, when specifying lighting for outdoor areas such as parking lots and garages, engineers often find themselves dealing with two competing forces: local energy use codes and lighting levels. recommended by your Lighting Engineering Society. of North America (IESNA). Occasionally the two sets of recommendations differ significantly.

There is general agreement that simply because of the color temperature of the light coupled with a superior color rendering index, metal halide luminaires are the preferred sources for car park lighting. Adding pulse start technologies to metal halides will further enhance their effectiveness. A quick comparison of metal halide lamps with high pressure sodium lamps reveals their degree of efficiency. Efficiency is measured on a Color Rendering Index (CRI), a measure of how well a light source creates the colors of objects that appear to the eye.

High pressure sodium lamps have a CRI of 25, while metal halide lamps have a CRI of 65 to 85. The biggest challenge in lighting a parking area can be the aisles caused by parked vehicles. To minimize these corridors, it is suggested that lighting be provided by at least two, and preferably four, utility poles that are a minimum of 20 feet tall. (As you landscape, keep in mind that low shrubs and shrubs are best, as they don’t diffuse overhead light the way mature trees do.) The optimum light level for an open car park (measured at the pavement) is 3-4 foot candles.

Regular supermarkets 3.45 foot-candles in rural areas and nearly 5 foot-candles in urban areas. For entrances and exits, lanes within the lot, and any loading zones, the lighting level must be twice the grade of the lot itself or the adjacent street, whichever is greater. On the other hand, so much lighting creates an additional problem. The brightly lit parking lots of quick-service restaurants, gas stations, supermarkets, and car dealerships have sparked some nasty neighborhood battles. Also, too much light, intended to produce safety, can actually result in a hazard as drivers’ eyes adjust from nighttime troubles to intense glare.

All the more reason to get deals from outdoor lighting specialists to handle this job right. And finally, depending on your serving style and clientele, one of today’s parking trends would be to reserve (and specially mark) a number of nearby spaces for special use. We’ve seen slots for takeout pickups, for seniors, and for guests with small children. Patio Eating Areas Dining al fresco is very popular, but it’s not without difficulty preparing the space. In numerous areas, outdoor dining is permitted only if you have the parking lot to accommodate it, but the rules occasionally depend on whether (and how) the outdoor dining area is covered: have a tent or umbrella or a rolled or permanent cover. . awning. Once again, check with the zoning authorities.

The rule to produce an outdoor dining room is to comfortably integrate it into the space that surrounds the restaurant. Find out ahead of time if it can be fenced off or cordoned off in any way, if necessary, and decide if the building’s existing doors will work for outdoor service: Is there a separate entrance for outdoor servers or should they? use the front doors to deliver food to outdoor tables? When the points fill up, does it still work? Are the guests inside getting buffeted by the wind and rain simply because the doors are continually being opened? Cookouts also have special room considerations: an additional outdoor seating area, the purchase of outdoor furniture, and the means to protect it from theft or inclement weather.